Do People Use ChatGPT to Find Local Businesses? What the Data Shows

People use ChatGPT and other AI tools to research local businesses, although no public dataset isolates local-intent ChatGPT queries precisely. ChatGPT serves roughly 900 million weekly users, Google's AI Overviews now sit on about 30% of searches (74% of problem-solving queries), and Gartner projects 25% of organic search traffic shifting to AI chatbots and virtual agents. The qualification: AI hasn't replaced Google Maps for "plumber near me" — it's absorbing the deciding part of local discovery, where shortlists form.

We watch this from an unusual seat: our software, Radar, observes real AI answers about local businesses daily. Here is what the available data supports, which local queries appear to be moving first, and what a local business can do about it.

What the numbers say

The available measures describe a change in search behavior:

• 68% of US Google searches end without a click (SparkToro, June 2026) — the majority of search behavior now resolves in the answer layer, before any website visit.
• AI Overviews appear on ~30% of Google queries, concentrated on question-form searches (Authoritas, 2025). Given Google's ~90% search share, this affects a substantial share of local research queries.
• ChatGPT's ~900M weekly users ask it conversational questions traditional search never saw — and when the question is "who should I hire," the answer names specific businesses.
• In our own scan data across local markets, the same buyer questions asked of ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity return concentrated recommendations: typically two to four business names per answer, with one or two businesses dominating repeated runs of a market's questions.

Precise adoption numbers remain limited, but some local-business research is shifting from lists of links to synthesized recommendations.

Which local searches moved to AI first

Not all local queries migrated equally. From what we observe:

1. Research and comparison questions moved first. "How much does a kitchen remodel cost?", "what's the difference between a crown and a veneer?", "best family lawyer for a custody case" — the anxious homework people do before contacting anyone. These are exactly the queries AI Overviews trigger on and users bring to ChatGPT.
2. High-consideration shortlisting is moving now. "Who are the most reliable roofers in Sarasota — I have a tile roof and two estimates already" is a real pattern: conversational, contextual, unanswerable by a map pin. AI tools like ChatGPT excel here, and recommendations at this stage can influence which businesses make the shortlist.
3. Urgent transactional lookups moved least. "Emergency plumber open now" still runs through Google's local pack and Maps — proximity and hours win, and Google's AI layer is only beginning to reshape those results.

The business implication: the queries that moved first are the ones where decisions form. A homeowner who asked ChatGPT three research questions and got the same company named twice arrives at the "near me" search already leaning.

How users interpret AI recommendations

Some younger users use AI chat as a starting point for research. Two related behaviors matter: voice assistants piping through the same AI models, and AI answers being trusted as recommendations rather than evaluated as ads. When an assistant says "customers praise their communication and cleanup," it can read like independent advice — sourced, invisibly, from reviews and web data the business may never have checked.

What this means for a local business

Keep the local SEO foundation and measure AI recommendations, which draw on many of the same inputs:

• Your Google Business Profile and reviews feed both. The local pack reads them; so do the AI systems synthesizing recommendations.
• Your website's clarity feeds both. Pages that answer real questions in extractable language rank in traditional search and supply AI answers. Structured data (schema markup) makes the facts unambiguous for each.
• The new work is measurement. You can see your Google rankings; you cannot see the thousands of AI conversations recommending someone in your market — unless you test. Start with what AI currently says about your business, then the playbook for getting recommended.

Early-mover math still applies: most local competitors haven't checked once. Accurate, easy-to-parse, corroborated information can help while many competitors have not yet checked these platforms.

Frequently asked questions

How many people use ChatGPT to find local businesses?

No public dataset isolates local-intent ChatGPT queries precisely — what's measurable is scale and direction: ~900M weekly ChatGPT users, AI Overviews on ~30% of Google searches, 68% of searches ending clickless, and Gartner's projected 25% organic-traffic shift to AI agents. Directionally: a minority of local discovery today, growing quarter over quarter, concentrated in research and shortlisting queries.

Do people trust AI recommendations for local services?

Some people do, especially when AI answers read as synthesized advice rather than advertising, and they justify picks with review themes ("praised for fast communication"). That trust transfers to whoever gets named, which is exactly why absence or inaccurate descriptions can affect consideration.

Will AI replace Google for local search?

AI is more likely to change local search than replace it. Google Maps and the local pack still dominate urgent transactional lookups, and Google's own AI Overviews keep discovery inside Google. What changes is where shortlists form: research and comparison questions increasingly resolve in AI answers before anyone types "near me."

How do I know if AI sends me customers?

Use two methods: ask new customers how they found you (AI referrals routinely get self-reported as "I searched online"), and measure the answer layer directly — test your market's buyer questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity and record who gets named. Our free scan automates that with receipts per answer.